chris adrian new world - always mistaking her emotions

Fully dressed, Sondra was lying on top of her covers when he knocked. She patted a spot next to her. Jim took off his shoes and lay down. “So where were we?” she asked. “Anaheim,” he said. “In ’Seventy-six.” “Oh yes!” she said. “Disneyland on the Bicentennial! Joe was so crabby.” “But he wasn’t generally crabby, was he?” “Oh no,” she said. “He got crabby like other people got colds. A few times a year and mostly in winter. And most of the time I always felt like it had nothing to do with me. Or with us. He’d go in and come out of the mood all by himself. And that time, at Disneyland, he got himself out of the mood with a pair of damned mouse ears. He brought them up to the desk to get monogrammed and then put them on his head and walked out of the store without paying for them. When I asked him why he did it he said he was angry that Nixon got pardoned. I said, ‘Joe, that was two years ago, and that was Ford, and you just stole from Walt Disney.’ And he said, ‘Honey, sometimes the Man is the Man.’    //like Maria in opening vignettes Play it as it Lays//

What do you think about that?” “He sounds like a wonderfully complicated person,” Jim said. “He wasn’t complicated to me,” Sondra said, staring at the ceiling and looking thoughtful. She put an arm across her eyes and sighed. “You know what, darling,” she said. “I’m not sure I can get it up today. Why don’t you talk for a little while.” “All right,” Jim said, though he was really there for Sondra to talk. It was good for her, to elaborate all these memories, even though to anyone else in the house it would look like he was just indulging her nostalgia, since she wasn’t doing anything to contain the memories let alone destroy them, and in fact she told some of her stories over and over. They just burbled out of her, and then disappeared for a while from their conversations, until they came burbling out again. It was surely a first step for her, he thought. For him, it was like getting to be a chaplain again. That was a habit of his old life, he knew, something he wasn’t supposed to be holding on to. In fact, he had been forgetting his favorite patients all week long, and he knew it wouldn’t be too long before he forgot he had ever been a chaplain at all. But talking with Sondra right now helped him with his own work. It helped him to call up his own memories, to get them ready to go into his book. Often he’d take whatever he’d just told Sondra to his office, and if she asked him the next day to continue the story about (for instance) his grandfather’s candy store, Jim would have no idea what she was talking about.
But lately, Sondra was mostly interested in hearing about Jane. He looked up at the ceiling and folded his hands on his belly. “Jane was always mistaking her emotions. You know, like a toddler who thinks he’s angry when he’s actually just terribly sleepy.” “I never had one of those,” Sondra said. “A toddler, I mean.” “Me neither,” Jim said. “But you know what I mean. She’d think she was anxious when she was actually angry. Or think she was angry when she ought to have been depressed //grieving//. With most people it’s the other way around, you know. Show me a depressed person and I’ll show you someone who just needs to go punch somebody in the face.”
//but even if wanted to try that, can't get it up, can we.// 
“I don’t think they have depressed people anymore, darling,” she said. “Except me. And maybe you. Are you depressed?” “Just sad,” Jim said. “I think it’s just how the… process makes you feel. You know? The emptying out. That can feel like sadness, but it’s not sadness. It’s just…” “Eternal desolation?” she said. Jim almost grinned. But then he got a better hold on himself, and on his pastoral authority. “Anticipation,” he said. “Isn’t this what they would all want for us? To be happy and free?” “They don’t want anything anymore,” Sondra said. “They’re dead. All that’s left is memories. Maybe it would be easier if we could just betray them, but it’s too late for that, right?” She sighed expansively. “Sorry. I think maybe I just need to try something a little different, you know? Like maybe gardening should just be to make the salad. And for remembering and all that other stuff, for getting rid of it… something else.” “Like what?” Jim asked. “Macramé?” she said. “Lassoing? Who knows?” She stretched and yawned. “Anyway, all this personal-growth talk is exhausting. Let’s just cuddle some, huh?” “Sure,” said Jim, opening up his arm so she could put her head on his shoulder. She nestled against him like a puppy, but just as Jim drifted off to sleep, she said, “I just keep thinking of Jason. You know, Frank’s partner. Once upon a time Frank lay right here and talked about him. And now Franklin’s gone. And you know what that means?” No, Jim said innocently. What does it mean? But he wasn’t actually speaking. He tried hard to clamber up out of drowsiness, but when he woke it was late in the afternoon and he was alone in her room. Sondra wasn’t at tea, or evening calisthenics, which he’d never known her to miss, but Jim didn’t start to wonder where she was until dinner. He sat quietly at the table drinking wine and trying to figure out how to introduce Jane into his book — what scene from their life could he finally start with? — but he was increasingly distracted by Sondra’s absence. At first he was just a little worried about her, but then he started to feel very strongly that she was not just missing but gone to her Debut. He said as much to Folly, who was sitting nearest to him. “Then I congratulate her,” Folly said stiffly. Or maybe you’re just jealous, Jim wanted to say. But instead he said, “Something wonderful has happened.” And Folly said, “Indeed.” So that refrain went around the table. But the Alices looked reserved, and his own Alice said that no one had ever left the house for the city in the evening before, and Sondra’s Alice only shrugged emphatically when Jim’s Alice whispered something to her. When they had all gathered in the great room after dinner, he saw his Alice and Sondra’s Alice slipping away and followed them. “But couldn’t she just have departed without you noticing?” he asked when he caught up with them. Sondra’s Alice shrugged, and his Alice said it would be very unusual. Then maybe, he said, she just had a headache. Or maybe she had gone to the city in a unique manner because she was a unique person And then he said maybe she was gardening at night, and that before they knew it she’d be doing something amazing like gardening on the walls or in the air. But he knew before they got to her room that when he had said something wonderful had happened he had just been too afraid to say that he really had meant something horrible, and he was already crying before they knocked open her door, and before they found her alone in her bed, and well before he saw how she’d used an old-fashioned straight razor (and what was one of those even doing in the future) to cut her own throat down to the bone. 1.13


http://mreadz.com/new/index.php?id=351833&pages=15


The New World: A Novel - Page 89 - Google Books Result https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0374221812


https://www.google.com/search?q=chris+adrian+new+world+depressed+angry&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

looking for this, re wrong about her emotions.  and 'show me a depressed person and I'll show you' .. wh also makes me think of twopj  ~ "scratch a ballerina and you are going to find a bisexual cokehead who hates her mother and hoards candy  and this is true in every instance ever in the history of the world and I can tell you that bcs I have met and partied and eaten popsicles for dinner w each & everyone of them and believe me when I tell you, girl they will wear you out. "
with absolutely no exceptions